I hope you got an extra vacation day.
Salary. I worked 5 years without a day off for one stretch, because we could not find competent help to take some of the load. Steep learning curve with very specialized software, where the system is connected by spread spectrum radios to a remote network, which are all encrypted private frequencies. Back then there were few pure computer science people roaming freely, and I came to IT with an electrical engineering background. So, programming and whatnot were all within my comfort zone.
Heavy background checks, would usually kill most hackers who knew what they were doing. I did get this National Laboratory’s “employee of the year award”, for $5,000, for going above and beyond to support our programs.